Cinderella Six Feet Under(27)

Ophelia looked up Pont Marie in her Baedeker. Her stomach sank. It was a bridge a mere five or six blocks from H?tel Malbert. If the police were after the right man, he was lurking close by.

*

Beatrice had shown up just long enough to slap together luncheon for the upstairs crowd, and then she ankled it out of the house again.

Prue got to work sprucing up the broom closet beneath the kitchen stairs. Maybe if everything was shipshape when Beatrice returned, she’d show Prue how to cook something Hansel might like.

When Prue darted outside the kitchen door to dump yet another dustpan full of mouse berries into the rubbish bin, she saw the man.

He was bulky. Uncommonly bulky, carrot-topped, and wearing drab, patched workman’s clothes, a woolen cap, and leather boots that fit snug around hamlike calves. Peculiar, too: it seemed, somehow, that Prue laying eyes on him startled him into motion. As though he’d been waiting for her to come out.

Prue dumped the dustpan and went back inside. Before she could slam the door, the man called out, “Wait.” In English. Not French.

Prue stayed by the door. She waited until the man arrived at the top of the kitchen steps.

The police had warned her to stay out of the sight of strangers. But surely it wouldn’t hurt to find out what the man wanted. Besides, he spoke English, and the murderer was French. Wasn’t he?

“You are a servant of this house, miss?” the man asked. He spoke with a funny kind of accent, not American or English. It reminded Prue of the dockworkers in New York.

“No,” Prue said. “I mean, yes. Well, in a manner of speaking. Doing servants’ tasks and such, but I ain’t being paid.”

“Not paid? How could you be held here, thus, like a slave?”

“No! It ain’t . . . I’m just helping out Beatrice. The housekeeper. She’s giving me lessons, like.”

The man peered over Prue’s shoulder. “Is Beatrice within?”

“She’s at market.”

“Ah.” A pause.

Prue clung to the door handle. The sky overhead churned dark. It hit her now, how alone they were. And how much this feller resembled an ogre in a pantomime.

“I must go inside,” Prue whispered.

“Of course.” The man bowed and set off towards the carriageway gate.

Prue went inside. Her fingers shook as she fastened and refastened the latch.

Something didn’t tally up right. That feller’s words, his gestures, had been gentlemanly in spite of his scruffy duds. He hadn’t said why he’d been in the garden. He hadn’t carried a parcel or a crate, as a deliveryman would. And how had he gotten past the carriageway gate?

One thing was certain: Prue couldn’t mention that she’d spoken to a stranger to Ophelia, or Beatrice, or anyone. She was supposed to stay sealed up tight in the house, like a pickle in a jar.

*

If Ophelia was to attend the ballet, she required something to wear. Her Mrs. Brand bombazine was not the crispest, to say the least. And something told her that muddy boots wouldn’t go over too well at the Paris Opera. She had fretted over it all through luncheon—a mysterious greenish soup and cold, tough meat—and the only place she could think of from which to borrow a fancy gown was Henrietta’s bedchamber.

Once Ophelia was in the bedchamber, she decided to have a more thorough look-see for clues before choosing a gown.

Henrietta wasn’t what you’d call a fastidious lady. Certainly, she was an expert on the authenticity of gemstones, and she could discern the name of a gentleman’s tailor with the briefest glance at his jacket lining. Still, her chamber was in more disarray than Ophelia ever recalled her dressing room at the Varieties having been. However, there was no blood anywhere, nor anything broken. No train ticket stubs, no letters, no photographs of a dashing gentleman who wasn’t her husband.

Wait. Here was something Ophelia had overlooked the first time around: a small book on the dressing table, underneath a bottle of rosewater complexion tonic. How to Address Your Betters, by A Lady. Ophelia flipped through. Nothing but advice on kowtowing to European blue bloods, with some bits about which fork to use and when not to use your hankie thrown in. On the title page, someone had scribbled a dedication: May you use this in good stead.—Arty.

Arty? Just like Henrietta to have some fellow involved.

Ophelia replaced the book under the bottle and kept searching. A jumble of shoes on the carpet, withered roses on the mantel—aha. A half-burned letter in the grate. Ophelia crouched and shook off ash from the remnant of envelope. Nothing remained but a return address: